Volkswagon Program
LAWTON – Five diesel-powered vehicles will be decommissioned and replaced by the City of Lawton using nearly two-thirds of a million dollars from the settlement of a Volkswagen emissions scandal.
The state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will award Lawton $638,532 from a program funded by the Volkswagen Diesel Emissions Environmental Mitigation Trust.
The city will use the funds to decommission and replace three diesel dump trucks and two diesel waste haulers, all of which are between 13 and 15 years old “and well beyond their service life,” said Public Works Director Larry Wolcott.
The vehicles have not been purchased or ordered yet, he said on March 26. “They are programmed into the proposed Fiscal Year 2021-22 budget.” The grant from the Volkswagen settlement, funneled through the DEQ, is expected to pay 75% of the $851,376 anticipated cost of the new vehicles, Wolcott said.
The city will buy the vehicles and then request reimbursement from the DEQ, he said.
The Volkswagen emissions scandal, also known as “Dieselgate” or “Emissionsgate,” began in September 2015 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act to German automaker Volkswagen Group.
The agency found that Volkswagen intentionally programmed turbocharged direct injection diesel engines to activate their emissions controls only during laboratory emissions testing, which caused the vehicles’ nitrogen oxides output to meet U.S. standards during regulatory testing but emit up to 40 times more NOx in real-world driving. Volkswagen deployed this software in about 11 million cars worldwide in model years 2009 through 2015.
The U.S. government and Volkswagen resolved allegations that VW violated the Clean Air Act by selling approximately 590,000 vehicles equipped with emissions defeat devices.
As a part of this settlement, VW is providing $2.7 billion for the 2.0 liter violating vehicles and $225 million for the 3.0 liter violating vehicles to an Environmental Mitigation Trust. Funds from the trust will be used to fully remediate the excess nitrogen oxide emissions from the illegal vehicles. Nitrogen oxides are gases that contribute to the formation of smog and acid rain, as well as affecting tropospheric ozone.